The Dreamer
by 2AM
Summary: It's easy to give up hope during the darkest hours of the night, when you have fought for so long. Elizabeth's thinks about life in Pegasus galaxy one night while stargazing on the balcony.


The Dreamer

Disclaimer: I do not own stargate atlantis... if I did I wouldn't have to study at UNI and I would not have raging migraines because I'm stressed out about my stupid exams coming up...

Spoilers: not really (I think)

Warnings: there is a hint of "sparky" (Liz/John) in here... but it's really just one of the characters thinking about it the remote possibility of a relationship nothing more, still if you don't like the pairing or canon-ly-dead-characters reappearing, consider yourself warned ;-)

Season: 1 before the eye/the storm

Summary: It's easy to give up hope during the darkest hours of the night, when you have fought for so long. Elizabeth's thinks about life in Pegasus galaxy one night while stargazing on the balcony.

AN: This started out one place and with one intention... and ended up somewhere I never even planned to go... still I think it turned out okay though parts of it seemed a little confusing to me... and I'm still not quite happy with it... unfortunately I don't think it will get any better... have fun reading it...

Quote that inspired this little fic: A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. Oscar Wilde

The Dreamer

When she was a little girl she would get lost everywhere. She just couldn't find her way by herself. Couldn't find the classroom in school, the mess hall on military bases, her parents' room in embassies. She could never find her way without help. The only exception to the "If you can get lost, you will get lost" Law that ruled her childhood were night time strolls. She never got lost in the dark. Always found her way back when other children would never have returned. Her father used to joke that she had the ability to navigate by starlight in her genes. That her ancestors had been sailors travelling over stormy seas, their only way of knowing where they were the position of the stars up above.

She had made an effort to learn their names, learn the stories behind the constellations. Andromeda was one of her favourites. The Princess, abandoned by her people, left to die at the edge of the sea. Her mother had worried about the fact that she didn't focus on the prince on the flying horse, who came to the rescue. That she focused on the dangerous, lonely part of the adventure. The distress not the happy end. Maybe she had always known that ever-afters and pegasus-taming princelings on white horses were not going to be a part of her life. For a moment the image of Major John Sheppard riding a winged horse coming to rescue her from the frothing seas beneath her balcony shot through her mind. It made her grin to think about what riding Pegasus would do to his ever-lasting case of bed-head.

Then she looked up at the sky again. Blues and blacks, foreign stars twinkling in the distance. Out of habit she tried to find Andromeda and failed. It had taken her a couple of nights of staring into this incredibly dark, smooth void until she realized that she missed the moon. Good old moon that had guided her on so many forbidden journeys into faerie worlds and Narnia and all the other fantasy realms her dreams had taken her to. And that usually guided her back at some point or another.

"I miss Perseus." A voice said out of the shadows of the walls behind her.

"Perseus?" She turned around and met the Major's gaze.

"Yeah." He sighed.

It didn't look like he was going to elaborate and she decided to go back to her own thoughts. Was it just coincidence that he mentioned that particular constellation when she was just comparing herself with the princess by the sea. There were no monsters out there (that they knew of), but Atlantis while being an anchor and a home, had also become her prison. The scientists and the soldiers regularly left the city, either on trips to the main land or on missions through the gate. Those that didn't go stayed behind by choice. She hadn't left the city more than once or twice during the last 6 months. She had come to explore a galaxy only to get 'chained' to a ghostly tower in the middle of the ocean. More often than not she found herself alone in the middle of her people.

'I was never meant to play the happy part.' She thought again, suddenly reminded of her blissfully married sister with her 2.4 kids, her family dog and her house with the white picket fence. Her sister who had actually married the guy her mother had set her up with. There was a fleeting memory of Simon's smile somewhere across the night sky... then she heard Sheppard's voice again. She had almost managed to forget that he was still here.

"It's my second name."

"I'm not sure I follow."

"Perseus. My second name is Perseus. When I was a kid my family moved around a lot... In each new place I would look out of the window on the first clear night and search for the constellation... when I saw it I felt..."

"... Home." She finished his sentence.

When he turned towards her she could see the questions in his eyes. People pretended to understand homesickness, pretended to get why one would look out for something familiar... most just didn't get why you would turn to something so far away. She had never met anyone else who really knew what she was talking about... and from the look on his face she was sure neither had he.

She sighed. "I miss the moon." She didn't tell him that she missed Andromeda even more. That she looked automatically for her princess, even now, months after leaving earth. It wouldn't do to give 'Major Kirk' the wrong ideas.

He turned back towards the sea. "Me too."

"The sky seems so empty without it. And the nights are so much darker. I wonder how people can live without it..."

"They don't know what they're missing." The tone of his voice implied that he was talking about more than earth's natural satellite and there was a finality in his voice that made her shudder. Out of the corner of her eyes she could see that his beautiful, lively green irises were suddenly dull and grey. For a few terrible seconds there was a deep horrible conviction in her heart... it was all over. He had abandoned hope. But what did that mean for her? What would happen if...?

He couldn't have given up on these people. He was the driving force behind every venture into wraith territory, every rescue mission, every relieve effort. She had hardly enough to take care of the expedition members. The city that provided shelter from the elements did not provide any protection against the enemy, they still didn't have enough power to support the shields. He was the one who constantly reminded her that they needed to help those that inhabited the planets they visited.

She stared up at the stars again... finding a "W" formation of stars in the sky... Cassiopaia... maybe she had become like the boastful queen. Her ambitions, her dreams, her visions of a better future, had brought her into this galaxy, had led to her self-inflicted imprisonment in the city of the ancestors, had turned her into the disillusioned pale shadow, standing on a balcony for hours at a time, with so many questions and no answers. Was she really so unwilling to help others that she had to rely on a man, a soldier no less, to remind her of their needs? Had she become one of the callous politicians she had fought so often both as a diplomat and a woman?

"Look."

Startled she turned towards Sheppard. His eyes were still fixed on the horizon. When she followed his gaze she discovered that the sky was ever so slightly turning brighter. Suddenly Sheppard straightened himself to his full height.

"Night's almost over." He turned towards her. His eyes were as green as ever. For a long moment they just stood there, staring at each other. "You need to stop doing this, Dr. Weir."

She blinked. "I need to stop looking at the stars?"

"You need to stop second guessing yourself." He turned around and started walking towards the door.

"Wait a minute, Major, why would you think...?"

He interrupted her. "Been there, done that, got the depression... it's so easy to doubt yourself, at the darkest hour of the night, when you're all alone. So easy. But it accomplishes nothing, it helps no one..." He seemed lost in thought for a moment. "Neither does locking yourself in that tower. Live a little, Liz!"

By the time she was ready to yell 'Don't call me Liz' after him, he was long gone. As she turned back towards the first pink and red signs of the nearing sunrise, she allowed herself for the first time during her stay in the Pegasus galaxy to not think about what problems the new day would bring. 'I don't understand why you have to think of her as the doomed princess, Lizzy, after all Perseus comes to rescue her in the end.' Her mom's words echoed in her mind. 'Don't call me Lizzy, Mom, I hate it when you do, and I don't think that she's doomed. I think that she's hope. You don't have to hope when you know everything's going to be fine, you have to hope when you have no idea where you are going and when you'll be back.' Her own voice had been petulant as always when her mother called her by her nickname.

She smiled at the memories that flooded her mind. Running through the garden on a warm summer evening, Venus shining in the Sky above her and a crescent moon smiling serenely at the rambunctious children laughing and screaming while rough-and-tumbling on the lawn. Sitting in her father's lap in the middle of the night watching a meteor shower, making wish upon wish upon wish. Spending a night on the beach with her friends during college, staring at the stars, deep in discussion about the alien civilisations that they all agreed didn't even exist.

Cowering blindfolded in the corner of some bombed out ruin in a god-forsaken desert, seeing Andromeda in her mind's eye, trying desperately not to despair, as the terrorists who had abducted her and a few other members of the NATO contingent fought over which hostage they should kill to make their point.

She had always assumed that this was the more violent, dangerous of the two galaxies that she had come to live in... remembering her abduction and following imprisonment on earth she suddenly realized that she had been wrong. Pegasus, untamed, unpolluted, unfree as it was had not given her a reason to feel this afraid for her own life, yet. She did fear for the lives of the people in her care, sleeping through the first glimmers of a distant sunrise. The same sunrise that while it had given her a moment of respite, a glimpse of happier, safer times, could not keep the shadows away from her permanently.

'Live a little, Liz!' John's parting jibe seemed to float around her like the first cold rays oft sunshine on her skin. John... she had been trying so hard to see him as a subordinate and a soldier for the past few weeks. Had tried desperately to keep herself from thinking of him as a friend, a confidant, a man she might in a remote future come to love. Something had changed tonight. She was missing the resolve to built up her defences. Couldn't find the strength to shut out the picture that had made her smile hours ago: John Sheppard riding Pegasus to her rescue. Maybe there really was hope. Maybe they would be able to 'tame' Pegasus and the dangers within this strange place they found themselves in. Maybe she could stop worrying if only for a few short minutes while the sun stared its journey across the sky.

Maybe...

"I'm not lost!" she whispered to the rising sun above the ocean. "I'm just temporarily misplaced."

AN: I hope you enjoyed reading this... please leave me a review, they are much appreciated and help to keep my muse happy. The very long following author's note retells the story of Andromeda, if you already know it, skip that, it will tell you nothing new.

AN1.5: I just realized that the title doesn't really fit the story anymore... well... I guess it sucks to be me ;-)

AN2: For all those who don't know the myths about Perseus and Andromeda... Andromeda was an ancient (in the none-stargate-sense) Princess whose mother (Cassiopaia) annoyed Poseidon/Neptune (the God of the Sea) by claiming to be more beautiful than his sea-nymphs. Poseidon sent a sea-serpent that devoured the people and cattle and so on... an oracle announced that there would be no relieve until Andromeda was exposed to the monsters wrath, so she was chained to the rocks on the shore and left to die... Perseus saw her and rescued her by slaying the monster, classically with the help of flying sandals that at some point belonged to Hermes, according to modern myth he rode Pegasus (whom he had tamed before instead of a guy called Bellerophon who "really" did that). Perseus then married Andromeda.

Why am I telling you all of this...? I just thought it would be funny if the guy trying to "tame" Pegasus galaxy had the middle name Perseus...


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